Professional Profile ...

Jeanette Nyden

Jeanette Nyden's mission in life is to level the playing field for small to mid-sized companies who are being squeezed in negotiations with larger corporations. Jeanette is the founder and president of J. Nyden & Co., a Seattle based training and professional speaking company. Jeanette shares her passion for negotiating by encouraging executives to better listen to what the other side wants while also asking for what their company wants and needs. She does this by bringing both negotiation theory and mediation theory to her training and consulting work.

Jeanette has over twelve years of real life experience negotiating a variety of deals. She started her career in 1994 as an Assistant Public Defender in Chicago, Illinois, the largest criminal justice system in the United States. After several years she was assigned defend men and women who were eligible for the death penalty. One of her most powerful negotiation experiences came while she and a colleague were negotiating a prison term for a death eligible client. Shortly thereafter, Jeanette moved to a boutique bankruptcy law firm and spent a couple of years handling their litigation matters.

In 2002, Jeanette and her husband moved to Seattle, Washington, just because they wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest. They sold their Chicago Condo, quit their law firm jobs and drove west, with little more than furniture, a name of a colleague's law school roommate and possibly — maybe a job interview — maybe.

After deciding that she no longer wanted to practice law in a traditional way, she became a certified mediator. In 2003, she started her corporate training and professional speaking company. Jeanette donates her time mediating disputes for the nonprofit Pierce County Center for Dispute Resolution.

Jeanette received her law degree in 1993 from Southern Illinois University School of Law. From 1995 - 1997, Jeanette took adult education classes on Saturdays at the University of Chicago, where she and 11 others learned all about the classics without all the tests and essays!